But my mother is, and I was raised by people who believed it was something awful and horrible and her fault and we should all be ashamed of it. I know better intellectually, but it's a pretty fucking big stigma for me. There are reasons I avoid considering seeing a shrink about potential depression, and that's a big one. So yeah, it pisses me off, and it hits me hard, and like someone poking at their own wounds, I keep reading people who I know are going to question my sanity, vocally, because I'm not jumping on the Kill Spike Now bandwagon. Because I *don't* think what happened makes him forever lost.

I wish I didn't see "And this means you, Amy" in every post where people are screaming their frustration and anger and rage at anyone who doesn't hate Spike because of the events of this episode. But I don't hate him, and I do see it, and it makes me tired and hurt and just.

Like I'm now never allowed to write anything with my viewpoint character, the one I've come to know from inside, tried to understand his conflicts, tried to treat Buffy fairly as a character, see her values in his eyes, defend her to the slashtwits who make her the Big Bitch Villain, when I personally can't fucking stand her... And I can't write him without bowing and scraping and disclaimering "But this is an AU Spike. I'm not trying to whitewash him. Real Spike is bad and evil and can't be saved and isn't worth being saved, and should be staked now, now, now." And even the disclaimer won't work. It really won't. I'll still be one of *Them* The ones who can ratiionalize anything away and you'd never want to trust us in a room with your innocent kids.